LUTHER AND CALVIN ON THE LAW by Editor

Seventh-Day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Thursday, February 19, 1880.

FromThe Review and Herald, Vol. 55, No. 8

LUTHER AND CALVIN ON THE LAW.

By Editor

In the exceptionally interesting number of the Bibliotheca Sacra for January, not the least interesting article is that on Calvin’s ethics. It is a translation from the German of one of those unique monographs in which the Germans especially delight. It is not the work of one who altogether admires the renowned Reformer. Points of dissent from his views on Christian ethics continually occur. But it seems to be an accurate and faithful collection of Calvin’s views, and a just account of his practice, whether accordant with his own views or not. In the light of recent discussions in the Advance and elsewhere, on law and gospel and kindred subjects, we have been specially interested in its representation of Calvin’s views thereupon compared with Luther’s.

“Of all the Reformers,” it is said, “Calvin most strongly presents the decalogue as the sum and substance of all ethics. The ten commandments are the rule of life which God prescribes for us. In them we have the perfect standard of all righteousness. Though the writings of the prophets and apostles, and even the words of our Lord himself, contain more ample directions than those given in the decalogue, they never make any real addition, but bring us back to it from every seeming departure.” Calvin gives this breadth to the Mosaic law by his system of interpretation. “To purely negative precepts he gives positive contents; to commandments which are specifically limited he ascribes a universal application.” Entirely external statutes are expanded into spiritual laws, and the moral law becomes substituted for the statutory judicial law. This interpretation he derives from the sermon on the mount.

One can see at a glance how very remote this is from the views of many at the present day. One can also easily see that this great Protestant thinker was in danger of making too much of external or even civil law, as a bridle, a healthful restraint on man’s acts. And this he did, so did all of the Reformers. Besides this, he held to two leading uses of moral law; “it reveals our weakness, sin, and condemnation;” in the hearts of those who are ruled by the Spirit of God it is a powerful motive to good, as well as a teacher day by day of the will of God.

Luther, on the other hand, regarded the condemning function of the law as its only one, “and when this was lacking there was no more law.” He exclusively conceived the law from Paul’s point of view “as a correlate of the fact of sin.” It was his peculiar experience as a monk that led to this, which, together with a “narrow adherence to the Pauline forms of expression, gave rise to the mistake of supposing that the law did not pass over into the realm of faith [we should say that the law was itself always, ipso facto, in “the realm of faith”], and consequently did not control believers. This inference was introduced into the system of Luther, as is well known by Agricola.” The following paragraph from the Bibliotheca completes the comparison:—

“Where Luther finds a voluntary acquiescence in the law, the law entirely vanishes, or takes on a form to which the universal conception of the law no longer applies. Calvin, on the contrary, explains the law under two distinct and opposite characters—with and without condemnatory effect. The believer is not released from the law as such, but only from the curse of the law. Calvin goes on emphatically to state that while the law is written by God’s finger upon believers’ hearts, they need the objective commandment of God none the less as a means of instruction and a motive to good. While, therefore, with Luther, the particular use of the law is for sinners, Calvin applies the law first of all to believers, for whom, however, the curse is removed. The hate of our sin and the knowledge of our blameworthiness Calvin derives from the effect of the gospel, and not the law.”

The distinction between the two doctrines is exhibited in the following remarks:—

“The law to Calvin is so far from being a mere correlate of the fact of sin, whose peculiar office is to reveal God’s wrath and curse, that it is grounded rather in the divine decree of salvation. He frequently remarks upon the fact that the decalogue was imposed at the time of Israel’s deliverance from Egypt. God will declare himself as our Lawgiver at the same time that he reveals himself as the God of our salvation. This thought constitutes one of the chief excellences of Calvin’s doctrine of repentance.”

That the French Reformer was more profound than the German one in all that relates to regeneration, we suppose hardly needs to be said. Certainly, when men repent toward God, this is a change toward his law. Condemnation by the law implies this; and if they are to live godly lives, more than the spirit of godliness in the heart is needed. Of what use is it to submit to the word and will of God, if there is nothing known which he requires? Of what avail is it to repent in view of and toward God’s law, if there is no law afterward to live by? Bondage to it, sole dependence on fulfilling it, as meritorious ground of acceptance, may all be abolished—that is one thing. Its eternal rectitude, its holiness, goodness, and truth, are quite another. Can the Spirit “lead us to holiness,” if it does not lead us to the very thing that the law requires? Whether we obey an epitome of it, in two general precepts, such as Christ generalized it into, or in the original ten commandments,—what is obeying God but obeying his law? And is there any gospel salvation without this obedience?—Advance.